Masks of Nyarlathotep

“He talked about terrible meetings in lonely places, or Cyclopean ruins…beneath which vast staircases lead down to abysses of nighted secrets, of complex angles that lead through invisible walls to other regions of space and time…”

–H. P. Lovecraft, “The Thing on the Doorstep”

NEWYORK

“AmongstmyfewplaymatesI was very unpopular, since I would insist on playing out events in history, or acting according to consistent plots… . The children I knew disliked them [and their] romping & shouting puzzled me. I hated mere play & dancing about— in my relaxations I always desired plot.”

–H. P. Lovecraft, Letters

LONDON

“Hewonderedat the vast conceit of those who had babbled of the malignant Ancient Ones, as if They could pause from their everlasting dreams to wreak a wrath upon mankind. As well, he thought, might a mammoth pause to visit frantic vengeance on an angleworm.”

–H. P. Lovecraft, “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”

CAIRO

“Itwassunsetwhenwescaledthatcliff,circled the modern mosque of Mohammed Ali, and even looked down from the dizzy parapet over mystic Cairo — mystic Cairo all golden with its carven domes, its ethereal minarets and its flaming gardens… Far over the city towered the great Roman dome of the new mesum; and beyond it — the awful Yellow Nile that is the mother of eons and dynasties…”

—from“UnderthePyramids”,a story ghost-written for Harry Houdini by Lovecraft